A high gain EBG backed monopole for MBAN off-body communication

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of an EBG array structure as a director for efficient radiation of a printed monopole antenna. A planar monopole printed on a partially grounded substrate is loaded with a 3×2 EBG structure, which improves the efficiency of the antenna and operates as a director, contributing towards higher gain. The addition of the EBG structure enables the constructive superposition of the fields radiated from the grounded planar monopole antenna, with the reflected fields from the EBG structure, and as a result the maximum directivity is directed along the z-axis when the antenna is placed in the x-y plane. The antenna structure has been optimized resulting in efficient radiation performance covering the entire medical body-area network (MBAN) from 2.36 to 2.4 GHz with 9 dBi gain. The aforementioned characteristics along with additional features like robustness, high directivity, high radiation efficiency of more than 90%, and reliable impedance matching in the entire MBAN band, even after body loading, make the proposed antenna a good candidate for reliable off-body communication applications using the IEEE 802.15.4j standard. © 2016 IEEE.